Last week, with little fanfare and under heavy security, an historic meeting took place in Rome which marked a turning point in interfaith relations. Inside the 16th century Casina Pio IV villa, home to the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, seven clerics representing over five billion people overcame lingering traditions of suspicion to commit to the eradication of modern day slavery by the year 2020.

The news is worrying. Maryam faces charges of insulting the King, assaulting an official (authorities say there was a scuffle when they took Maryam's phone, from which she was tweeting her experience), and running an organisation which named officials who had tortured political prisoners. She could face a long sentence.

British journalists are wrong. Countries do not frequently go to war without strategies, with flimsy aims, bad intel, or for spurious reasons. If it appears that they are doing so, then it is usually because war aims have to be concealed. Concealment can be necessary for many reasons.

The author has called it a "labour of love". Seven years of painstaking research and interviews all done alongside a full-time role at BBC Radio. The result of it all should prompt future generations as well as those alive today to show a debt of gratitude to Innes Bowen...

If it is possible for the government of Iraq to repel and contain ISIS with Iran's help, the United States should definitely support such an action. There need be no real fear at this time that either the Shi'a or Sunni forces will evolve into a kind of World War III in the Middle East...

Along with the hope that "The Arab Spring" gave the world, it now seems that attempts at establishing some form of democracy in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere have not worked out so well for the US and the West. Perhaps it is time for the US and the West to rethink its mission as "Champion of Democracy" and "Keeper of World Peace".

Sectarian violence in Syria is now threatening more than just the Middle East. Syria's civil war, whose direction at first seemed synonymous with other countries of the Arab Spring, quickly became a full-blown battle of Shia-Sunni sectarianism.

The last thing we need is to import sectarianism into our country. Al-Arifi may have done us all a favour by coming to the UK since it has focussed on the need for better due diligence to be undertaken and to make us all wake up to the fact that whilst Syria may seem a long way away, its impacts can so easily affect our community relations in our small island.

At long last, a policy on Syria that makes sense. This week, prime minister David Cameron indicated that Britain was ready to bypass an EU arms embargo and deliver arms to Syria's opposition fighters - much to the horror I expect of Bashar Assad.

The officially stated UK government rationale justifying arming Syria's rebels relies upon at least two flawed assumptions. The first is that pouring sophisticated weaponry into a war zone already awash with weapons will save civilian lives.

A meeting in the House of Lords today will consider the latest in a series of massacres of the Hazara people in the Pakistan province of Balochistan, and its connection with the wider sectarian attacks on Shi'as throughout Pakistan.

For more than a decade I have been studying the community dynamics of Muslim Britons. Their views on the Arab uprisings are intriguing: sectarian fears, disappointments, scepticism, hope and ethnic concerns are all there.